Blockbuster, which has over 6000 “Express” kiosks, has announced that they are expanding to Kwik Trip convenience stores starting this week.
The Express kiosks will now be placed in 300 of the convenience stores in Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota.
NCR, the company which operates the kiosks, says it hopes to expand to 10,000 kiosks in operation by July, in an effort to compete against RedBox, which has over 25,000 kiosks currently operating across the nation.
A few months ago, Blockbuster acquired small kiosk maker DVDPlay, allowing for an expansion into the west coast, most notably in California, Denver and Chicago.
In March, the rental company announced it had reached a deal with Warner Bros. to have new Warner releases available for rental day-and-day with release date, and a full 28 days before rivals Redbox and Netflix get them. That deal does not expand to the Express kiosks, however.
Result for: rivals
LG Display has increased fears of rapid supply growth of LCD panels by announcing it is considering constructing a new LCD production line to meet demands. Manufacturers of LCD television products have been enjoying a healthy level of demand for LCD flat-screens, bolstered recently by Chinese holidays and sporting events like the Winter Olympics.
However, concerns are taking root in the industry that it may return to a state of oversupply as manufacturers beef up production to capitalize on the demand. Controlling supply is important for players in the industry to maintain profit margins for the technology.
“Although demand is strong, growing capacity will become increasingly burdensome for the industry,” said Jason Kang, an analyst at NH Investment & Securities. “Supply is already growing and the growth will be faster next year.”
LG plans to begin operation of a separate production line in the first half of 2010, while Taiwanese rivals are increasing factory utilization. “We are considering increasing capacity because we have been unable to meet all client demand for some time,” said an LG Display spokesman. “But nothing has been decided yet.”
LG Display CFO James Jeong revealed to investors just last month that the company was meeting under 90 percent of orders received and that the situation was likely to continue for months.
Result for: rivals
PCWorld has reported this week the results of their annual 13-city 3G wireless data test, and the changes in results from last year are drastic.
Averaging the lowest average download and upload speeds last year, AT&T has brought itself back, registering the best average speeds for this year, including the best performance in 10 of the 13 cities, besting rivals Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint.
AT&T average download speed grew to 1410 kbps, and reliability increased as well.
Before posting the charts, here is how the source reports their testing:
Before getting into the details of our test results, a few words about the testing and the data. During December and January, PCWorld and our testing partner, Novarum Inc., tested the download speeds, upload speeds, and network dependability of the AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon 3G networks from 20 locations in each of 13 U.S. cities. Altogether we ran more than 51,000 separate tests covering 850 square miles of wireless cell coverage servicing 7 million wireless subscribers (see “How We Do the Testing”).
At each testing location, we connected to the 3G network via both laptops and smartphones. The laptop tests accurately measured the capacity and performance potential of a given network, while the smartphone tests approximated the real-world connection speeds users of these popular devices might experience, given the less-powerful processors and 3G radios that the devices contain.
The charts:
